Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(18)

“Gone?”

“The Sovereignty,” the monk explained. He rubbed his face red.

“The ambassador is gone? Has it been replaced?”

“All of them,” Brother Anthus replied. “The ambassador and all of its minions. All of them have gone.”

“Relocated, then,” Arunika reasoned. “Perhaps they believed themselves vulnerable since Sylora’s fall, and so moved to—”

“Gone!” Brother Anthus shouted, and Brother Anthus rarely raised his voice. He was frantic, though, thoroughly flustered and agitated. “They have departed the region. The ambassador left this behind.” He pulled a small cloth off a vial beside him and held it aloft. Arunika looked at it curiously.

“A thought bottle,” Brother Anthus explained. He held the opened vial up before his nose, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, then shook his head as if listening to a sad song, finally ending again with a simple, “Gone.”

Arunika took the vial from him and similarly inhaled. She didn’t exactly hear a voice in her head, but the message left behind was clear enough. The situation was too unstable, the Sovereignty had decided. The fall of Sylora Salm might well introduce more powerful minions of Szass Tam, or even Szass Tam himself, into the region, and that might bring a corresponding response from the Netheril Empire. Most prominent of all of the thoughts imparted was the notion that this was not the time for the Sovereignty to move on the region.

“They are not mortal in the sense that you are,” Arunika explained to Brother Anthus.

“They play the long game,” the monk agreed.

“They can afford to.”

“As can you,” the monk retorted rather harshly, and Arunika found herself surprised by his declaration. “What does it matter to you?” he asked rather flippantly, and the succubus feared then that the monk had figured it out and knew of her true identity. Had the aboleths informed him?

“Or to them?” he quickly added, seeing the devil’s dangerous scowl. “What is a score of years to beings who measure their lifetime in centuries, or even millennia? What is a century?”

“Aboleths are not eternal.”

“But their thoughts are. Their collective understanding, their meld, will continue through generations yet unborn.”

“And you will be dead,” Arunika said, somewhat callously.

Brother Anthus looked at her plaintively. “I gave them everything,” he whined. “I let them into my every thought. I stood naked before them as never before, even to myself.”

“Could you have stopped them from so stripping you, had you tried?” Arunika tossed out, but Anthus, wound up in his tirade, seemed to not hear.

“I believed in them!” the monk roared on. “I forsook my own order, my kin and kind. I made few inroads among the citizens of Neverwinter, gave not a thought to Sylora Salm, and have not even spoken directly with the new Netherese Lord of Neverwinter. And now they have abandoned me! And I am left with . . . what?”

“And myself?” Arunika asked, trying to get a full admission from the man.

“What do you care?” he shot back. “You did not throw in with the Sovereignty as I did. Arunika will thrive, whichever lord claims stewardship of Neverwinter.”

Arunika quietly breathed a sigh of relief, now thinking that Anthus’s comments referred to the little she had to lose, and not the millennia she had to live.

“Szass Tam will not come,” she assured him. “I have visited his Dread Ring, and there is little left of it worth his troubles. With the Netherese strong in the region, the cost would prove too great. He’ll keep his Ashmadai fools here, likely, and there remains Valindra—though believe me when I tell you that she is missing the Sovereignty more than you ever could. But Szass Tam will make no further concerted move against the region.”

“There remain the Shadovar.”

“With the fall of the Thayans, Alegni will get no further help from Netheril.”

“He will not need it.”

Arunika smiled at him slyly. “That remains to be seen.”

“What do you know?” the monk asked hopefully.

“If Herzgo Alegni is to be Lord of Neverwinter, then who will come to join the settlers? What man or elf or dwarf or halfling or any other race will come in to join the glorious rebuilding of Neverwinter when it is under the domination of the likes of a Netherese tiefling barbarian like Lord Alegni?”

“What Shadovar, then?” the suddenly-cynical Brother Anthus said. “Or orcs. He will attract orcs, no doubt!”

“And invite the Lords of Waterdeep to turn their eyes and arms to the north?” Arunika replied with a laugh. “Alegni thinks he achieved a great victory with the death of Sylora Salm, but in truth, his power came from the fear of an enemy. As that enemy diminishes, so will he, do not doubt. Soon enough, he will grow bored and fly away. Or his Netherese masters will send him back into the forest in search of the artifacts, as was his original mission. Or he will overstep and invite war with Waterdeep, and he will lose.”

She nodded solemnly at Brother Anthus, even rubbed the forlorn monk on the shoulder. “The Sovereignty will return in a decade or two, fear not. Few understand them, but their pattern is not to abandon a place once they have laid the base of a new home. Use these years wisely, my young friend,” she advised. “Make of Brother Anthus a great name in Neverwinter, so that when the aboleths return, they will see in you a powerful ally.”